"I don't know the solution, but the WSJ's Subscriber Agreement (similar to most other publications) is quite clear...."------------------------

The solution from our point of view is to do no harm to them, and from their point of view to send a friendly letter or cancel my subscription anytime they find me to be an annoyance.

The WSJ is not run by the lawyers. The business side of the publication is thrilled to have their columns quoted and talked about across the talk shows and the internet - right up to the point of where is starts to take money out of their pocket.

Stephanoplous brought this up in a debate when there was no issue whatsoever in any state over access to contraception. Now it is David Gregory's first question to a major party candidate for President on Meet the Press. Good grief. Newt handles him well. Yet Gregory sticks to the script completely ignoring the answer already given. Just terrible, terrible journalism. Falsehood after falsehood advanced in the question, repeatedly, AFTER being corrected.

Stephanoplous brought this up in a debate when there was no issue whatsoever in any state over access to contraception. Now it is David Gregory's first question to a major party candidate for President on Meet the Press. Good grief. Newt handles him well. Yet Gregory sticks to the script completely ignoring the answer already given. Just terrible, terrible journalism. Falsehood after falsehood advanced in the question, repeatedly, AFTER being corrected.

UCLA Professor: Without Media Bias the Average US State Would Vote Like Texas or Tennessee

Dr. Tim Groseclose is the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at UCLA. He has joint appointments in the political science and economics departments and has held previous faculty appointments at Caltech, Stanford University, Ohio State University, Harvard University, and Carnegie Mellon University.

Tim released the book Left Turn recently and was on Hannity with Senator Fred Thompson on Friday night to discuss the book.

UCLA Professor: Without Media Bias the Average US State Would Vote Like Texas or Tennessee

Dr. Tim Groseclose is the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at UCLA. He has joint appointments in the political science and economics departments and has held previous faculty appointments at Caltech, Stanford University, Ohio State University, Harvard University, and Carnegie Mellon University.

Tim released the book Left Turn recently and was on Hannity with Senator Fred Thompson on Friday night to discuss the book.

By Edward Champion – March 17, 2012Posted in: daisey-mike, Theater, This American Life

On Friday afternoon, Mike Daisey, the monologist who appeared on This American Life earlier in the year to report on apparent abuses of Chinese workers at Foxconn, was revealed to have fabricated and conflated substantial details of his story. Daisey’s lies and errors had proven so severe that This American Life devoted an entirely new episode to clearing up Daisey’s story.

Daisey’s tale, which was an excerpt from his one-man show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, had helped to shape many people’s feelings about Apple. Apple had relied upon its supplier, Foxonn, to manufacture its line of iPhones and iPads. And while an independent investigation from The New York Times earlier this year also revealed unsafe working conditions at Foxconn, there remain significant doubts over whether much of what Daisey has stated on stage and on air is true.

“As best as we can tell,” said host Ira Glass on the new episode of This American Life, “Mike’s monologue in reality is a mix of things that actually happened when he visited China and things that he just heard about or researched, which he then pretends that he witnessed first-hand.” Glass went on to say that he had taken Daisey at his word and that he saw no reason to doubt Daisey. “I can now say in retrospect that when Mike Daisey wouldn’t give us contact information for his interpreter, we should’ve killed the story rather than run it. We never should’ve broadcast this story without talking to that woman.”

Rob Schmitz, a Marketplace correspondent in Shanghai, was able to track down “Cathy” — Daisey’s interpreter for the piece, whose real name is Li Guifen but who also goes by the name Cathy Lee — by putting the terms “Cathy,” “translator,” and “Shenzhen” into Google. He called the first phone number that came up. Cathy Lee did not know that Daisey had used her in his show. She thought that Daisey was merely an American writer.

Over the weekend, I got a link to a story about Malia Obama heading off to Mexico for vacation with 12 friends and 25 Secret Service agents. The story is newsworthy because it implicates taxpayer concerns: Malia is going to a nation that the State Department warns is dangerous, and Americans are footing the bill for the 25 federal employees who are necessary to offset that danger. I know that these Secret Service agents are on the payroll regardless, but feeding and lodging them outside of Washington, D.C. becomes the taxpayers’ burden. (In the same way, Obama’s little basketball jaunt with PM Cameron cost the taxpayers an extra $478,000 over the regular fixed costs in the “taking care of POTUS” budget.)

You’ll notice that I haven’t included the link to the story about Malia Obama’s trip. That’s because, by the time I received the email with the link to the Malia vacation story, the great white-out had begun. As I, and every other sentient web-using being had noticed, the story about Malia Obama was melting away as quickly as the wet Wicked Witch of the West. Those of us trying to find a solid link for the story felt as if we were playing a bizarre version of whack-a-mole. The links would pop up for a second, only to vanish again.

The big question, of course, was why? Why is an apparently properly sourced story vanishing? If it was false, one would expect White House push-back, with the news sources either denying the White House’s arguments or issuing apologies for their error. A vanishing story, however, has been a first. And now the truth has come out. The White House told the news agencies that it’s not fair to report on the kids:

The White House has admitted to telling news agencies to pull stories on Malia Obama visiting the Mexico for spring break, Politico reports.

From the beginning of the administration, the White House has asked news outlets not to report on or photograph the Obama children when they are not with their parents and there is no vital news interest. We have reminded outlets of this request in order to protect the privacy and security of these girls.

There are a couple of problems, however, with the White House’s reasoning and the media’s craven collapse. First, as I noted in my opening paragraph, it is newsworthy that the White House has opted to impose on taxpayers the very real and high costs of sending the First Daughter to a nation that’s on the State Department’s own warning list (although the region in which Melia is now traveling is not specifically named in that list).

Second, the Obamas routinely trot out the kids to score political points. The most recent example was the way President Obama used his daughters to justify calling Sandra Fluke to sympathize with her when Rush Limbaugh suggested that spending thousands of dollars on sex aids, and then expecting others to pay for them, suggested that Fluke is not a lady, in the old-fashioned sense of the word. Bristol Palin sums it up nicely:

You don’t know my telephone number, but I hope your staff is busy trying to find it. Ever since you called Sandra Fluke after Rush Limbaugh called her a slut, I figured I might be next. You explained to reporters you called her because you were thinking of your two daughters, Malia and Sasha. After all, you didn’t want them to think it was okay for men to treat them that way:

“One of the things I want them to do as they get older is engage in issues they care about, even ones I may not agree with them on,” you said. “I want them to be able to speak their mind in a civil and thoughtful way. And I don’t want them attacked or called horrible names because they’re being good citizens.”

Most political observers also thought it wasn’t a coincidence that Barack’s and Michelle’s 2011 Christmas card — the last one they’ll be sending out before the election — prominently features their two daughters. This was a campaign photo and it made the daughters a prop.

I don’t mind that Obama is using his daughters politically. Politicians do that all the time, and it’s no use pretending that the Obamas don’t have two daughters out there who make perfect photographic and rhetorical props. What I do mind is that the White House gets to eat its cake and have it. It announces to the press “We get to use the Obama girls when it’s good for us, but you don’t get to use the Obama girls when it’s bad for us.” And the press, meekly, goes away.

Rather than collapsing spinelessly, the press, collectively, should have said, “Sorry, but this story is already out there, so you’ll have to deal with the security consequences of sending your daughter off to a dangerous country. As for future stories, we won’t report on your daughters if you’ll stop using them to score political points. As long as you keep them in the public eye, however, they’re fair game for honest reporting about their activities.”

I guess, though, that my dream of an upright and honest media is as much a fantasy as that melting Wicked Witch of the West.

The AFP, the Huffington Post and other websites have scrubbed a report about first daughter Malia Obama's school trip.

On Monday, the AFP reported that Obama's daughter was on a school trip along with a number of friends and 25 Secret Service agents. The story was picked up by Yahoo, the Huffington Post, and the International Business Times, as well as UK publications like the Daily Mail and the Telegraph and other overseas publications like The Australian.

But on Monday night, the story had been removed from those sites .The AFP page for the story now links to a story titled "Senegal music star Youssou Ndour hits campaign trail," as does the Yahoo page. The Huffington Post page now links directly back to the Huffington Post homepage. The Daily Mail, Telegraph, and Australian stories now lead to 404 error pages, reading "page not found." The International Business Times story also links to the IBT homepage, though a version of the original story still exists online.

A spokesperson at the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, though given the late hour that can be forgiven. I will update here if and when I hear back from the White House, and when I hear back from spokespeople with the various websites and news agencies.

UPDATE: Kristina Schake, Communications Director to the First Lady, emails to confirm this was a White House effort:

From the beginning of the administration, the White House has asked news outlets not to report on or photograph the Obama children when they are not with their parents and there is no vital news interest. We have reminded outlets of this request in order to protect the privacy and security of these girls.

It’s not actually about the First Daughter, per se, who according to serially vanishing stories has been vacationing with a group of friends in Mexico — a country for which the State Department just last month issued a new warning to all U.S. travelers.

It’s about the judgment of the White House, which apparently deems there is “no vital news interest” to this story.

How so?

Let us set aside the obvious hypocrisy of a president who denounces the “1%” and calls for Americans to tighten their belts, while members of his own family summer on a Martha’s Vineyard estate, spend Christmas beachside at Oahu, and travel for fun to the ski slopes of Colorado, the luxury suites of Marbella, and now, scenic spots in Mexico. If that is the image Obama wants to cultivate, or those are the family pleasures with which he wishes to balance the rigors of his presidency, so be it.

Let us set aside, for the moment, the queasy feeling it brings, reminiscent of the air-brushed politburo photos of Mao’s China, to see news stories erased, one after another, at the behest of the White House. Doubtless there are security concerns here. Though, especially in the information age, it suggests an odd obliviousness to think that an optional holiday, entailing security concerns presumably serious enough to warrant erasing news stories, should not qualify as a legitimate story.

Let us even set aside the cost to taxpayers of dispatching Secret Service agents — reportedly, 25 of them — to Mexico, not for official White House business, not for something that clearly benefits belt-tightening U.S. taxpayers, but for the pleasure trip of a family member. There is a case to be made, persuasive or not, that the presidency should not be such a burden as to preclude whatever the first family can manage in the way of reasonable socializing and entertainment.

Let us also set aside any tut-tutting about parental discretion in letting teenagers travel to places under a travel warning from the State Department. The First Family is in a good position to weigh the risks to its members, and is doubtless well acquainted with the first-rate competence of the Secret Service to provide security, which, when factored into the equation, presumably goes far to lower the risk for the vacationing First Family member.

But that brings us to the risks faced by those traveling secret service agents — whether 25 in number, or whatever the precise total might be. Yes, their job is to protect the First Family, and that includes taking a bullet or laying down their lives, if need be, to ensure that not a hair on a First Head is harmed. We can expect to hear no complaints from the Secret Service. But those Secret Service agents quite likely have families, too. They have now been dispatched to do their job not within U.S. shores where American authorities have enormous powers to minimize the risks, nor in a place which the State Department at least regards as routinely secure for Americans to amuse themselves on spring breaks. Instead, these Secret Service agents have been sent to provide security in Mexico, where the State Department warns that due to transnational criminal organizations, “crime and violence are serious problems throughout the country” including “homicide, gun battles, kidnapping, carjacking and highway robbery.” State reports that “gun battles have occurred in broad daylight on streets and in other public venues, such as restaurants and clubs.” Of particular concern are “kidnappings and disappearances throughout Mexico,” with local police in some cases implicated. State adds that U.S. government personnel and their families “are prohibited from travel” to some of the most dangerous areas. And though the holiday destination reported in the vanishing new stories is not on the list of Mexican provinces totally taboo for personal travel of government personnel, State warns that in Mexico, “even if no advisories are in effect for a given state, crime and violence can occur anywhere.”

Perhaps one way the White House is entitled to regard the Secret Service is that there should be no constraints on the risks its agents are asked to run, for whatever reason. Certainly if the president wants to visit Afghanistan (which he’s done twice, on highly secured “surprise” visits, during his presidency), or go to Mexico on official business, it’s appropriate that Secret Service agents are expected to go with him, and do their jobs, at higher risk, to protect him and any family members in tow. But — hoping that all goes safely and smoothly with this Mexican spring break, and trusting to the Secret Service to ensure the safety of members of the First Family, wherever they might go — may we ask, nonetheless, a question:

In the terrible event that State’s warning proves relevant, and in the course of doing whatever it takes to provide security, any of those 25 or so American Secret Service agents are wounded or even killed in the line of fire, would the White House still consider the context a non-story? Would it be irrelevant that they had been asked to run such risks not to safeguard official business, but to enable a personal holiday trip to a place under a U.S. government travel warning? One need not quarrel over whether the White House, or anyone in it, is entitled to organize holiday trips to just about anywhere on the planet. But being entitled to do something does not necessarily mean it’s a good idea to do it. Where’s the sense of responsibility to those who serve? Where’s the judgment?

By JAMES FREEMAN New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny could not have been pleased when GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum called "bulls ---" on his questioning at a Sunday campaign event in Wisconsin. So perhaps it's not surprising that Mr. Zeleny has co-authored a piece suggesting that it's time for Mr. Santorum to quit the race.

In his speech at the Sunday event, Mr. Santorum described problems with rival Mitt Romney's health-care plan in Massachusetts and then said that Mr. Romney is "the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama." Afterwards, Mr. Zeleny asked Mr. Santorum to defend the claim that "Mitt Romney was the worst Republican in the country." There is of course a difference between saying someone is the worst person among millions in a political party and saying that someone is the party's worst option to face a particular opponent. This may partly explain Mr. Santorum's use of the barnyard vulgarity.

In any case, we can only imagine what Mr. Santorum said when he saw Mr. Zeleny's co-authored story this week carrying the headline, "Santorum Ignores Pressure to Bow Out to Romney." Since Mr. Santorum is running second, voters may wonder why the Times isn't applying even more pressure to bow out on also-rans Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul.

It's a particularly good question given recent polling out of North Carolina, which holds its primary in May. Like the Times, the firm Public Policy Polling leans left, yet its recent survey suggests that Mr. Santorum becomes more competitive as the field shrinks. PPP finds that Messrs. Romney and Santorum are now tied for the lead. Says PPP, "Two weeks ago Romney had a four point lead over Santorum in the state. Romney's support has remained pretty steady since then," but Mr. Santorum has gained as Mr. Gingrich has declined. "If Gingrich dropped out of the race Santorum would open up a 6 point lead in North Carolina with 43% to 37% for Romney and 13% for Paul."

It's hard to say whether GOP voters nationally would make a similar choice, but what is the journalistic purpose in encouraging a front-runner's strongest competitor to quit?

This Martin/Zimmerman situation is horrible enough but the explosion of emotion on the media is unbelievable.

Of course we keep hearing all these new pieces of evidence but I have to agree with Judge Napolitano that he probably should be arrested and charged. While Martin may not be an angel he was not the instigator at least initially, and the 911 dispatcher did advise Zman to back off and it appears he didn't. I don't see how neighborhood watch can be construed to be ok to chase someone down a street with a gun.

I guess this has many issues involved:

RaceRacial profilingconcealed weapons Fla unique stand "your ground law" (which to me has nothing to do with this - someone following another on public property)gangster apparal

A trial seems to me the only way yet it would be OJ Simpson all over again.

"the 911 dispatcher did advise Zman to back off and it appears he didn't."

NO, this is not accurate. The dispatcher said "We don't need you to do that" or "You don't have to do that" i.e. something that would protect the police from liability claims should it be claimed that they asked for/encouraged his help. That is NOT the same thing as "Back off!"

"I don't see how neighborhood watch can be construed to be ok to chase someone down a street with a gun."

NBC disclosed today that it will be launching an internal investigation into a segment about the Trayvon Martin case that appeared on the Today show, in which a call between George Zimmerman and a 911 dispatcher prior to Martin's death was edited in such a way that it portrays Zimmerman as a racial profiler. The editorial decision under review involves the removal of the dispatcher's inquiry about the race of the person Zimmerman was following — Martin. Absent that question, Zimmerman's comments get strung together as if he said, in sequence, "This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black."

The Washington Post provides the full transcript of that part of the call:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?

Zimmerman: He looks black.

Of course Zimmerman goes on to follow Martin against the advice of the dispatcher, but in this version of the call, it doesn't appear that he's awkwardly offering the information or in effect, profiling. Zimmerman still might have been, but the truncated call left much less doubt.

The Post's Erik Wemple writes that in a case where few facts are undisputed, it was particularly egregious to misrepresent one of them, the phone call. "To portray that exchange in a way that wrongs Zimmerman is high editorial malpractice well worthy of the investigation that NBC is now mounting."

Meanwhile New York Times media czar David Carr wrote a column today titled "A Shooting, And Instant Polarization," in which he similarly impugned some media coverage of this controversial case.

That the public is rendering its verdict immediately and firmly may be routine, but choosing sides takes on a deeper, more dangerous meaning when race is at the heart of the story. Race as an explosive issue is nothing new, but it’s been staggering to see it simmer and boil over in our hyperdivided media environment where nonstop coverage on the Web and cable television creates a rush to judgment every day.

Partisan politics and far-flung conflicts fit nicely into that world — who’s ahead, who’s behind, should we stay or go? — but racial conflict? Not so much.

That hasn’t stopped many in the media from displaying the same reflexive vigilantism that some are attributing to George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon. All over the Internet and on cable TV, posses are forming, positions are hardening and misinformation is flourishing. Instead of debating how we as a culture are going to proceed, an increasingly partisan system of news and social media has factionalized and curdled.

Carr and Wemple are not the only two to call out partisan media and media at large for mishandling coverage of the Martin case, or misrepresenting specific aspects of it. Nor are NBC or Business Insider (chastised by Carr for mishandling dubious photos) the only two to have erred in their coverage.

NBC is busy taking down the evidence of its repeated usage of its bogus edit of the George Zimmerman 911 call. This follows the firing of a producer for the use of the same bad edit on the March 27 Today Show. Left unanswered - what about the March 22 use on the Today Show? [LATE ADD: a third usage of "He looks black" has been found and edited out of existence (but not Google Cache!) at NBC 6 Miami, as described below. When will the Elite Media sniff a cover-up?]

Twelve days ago Dan Riehl found this at MSNBC:

“This guy looks like he’s up to no good … he looks black,” Zimmerman told a police dispatcher from his car. His father has said that Zimmerman is Hispanic, grew up in a multiracial family, and is not racist.

The use of ellipsis clearly indicate that the conversation was clipped. This version has since been re-edited (without any explanation) to include the complete exchange.

Yesterday the discovery by Les Jones of two similar bad edits at NBC 6 Miami for stories from March 19 and March 20 were widely broadcast by the InstaPundit. As of this writing, those stories have been "fixed" by the web editors to eliminate the troublesome passages (and are marked as updated April 9; the specific update is unexplained). Fortunately, the original versions live on in Google Caches and screen shots taken by Les Jones, shown below.

And on Monday Jeralyn Merritt discovered, with Lexis, this Today Show transcript from March 22 with the same bad edit. So far that is still online, but a screenshot is below.

[And let me add - in the updates I discover at least one, possibly two new NBC 6 Miami stories from Mar 17 and Mar 19 that were re-edited on April 9 and *may have* contained the bad edit]

So, it seems to be a bit of a race - can NBC sweep this down the memory hole before the crowd notices?

They just might succeed - the firing of a producer for one bad edit on the March 27 Today Show got a lot of attention and the Daily Caller knows the score but I have seen no Elite Media mention of the scope of this problem: twice on the Today Show plus twice at NBC 6 Miami plus once at MSNBC (which was their version of an NBC 6 Miami story) makes five appearances of the bad edit, yet the media coverage is of a producer fired for one March 27 use. Three usages have been airbrushed away with no notice; Lexis will preserve the March 22 Today Show, but that won't matter if no one looks.

The "He looks black" portion was dropped with no obvious replacement in the latest version.

And:

White House Monitoring Trayvon Martin Case as Protests Mount

A state stand your ground law might prevent any prosecution

Christina Hernandez, Jeff Burnside and Edward B. Colby

Lest you doubt, Jeralyn Merritt and Les Paul have some links and contemporaneous accounts of this reality.

Lets see if NBC can be prodded into an even more comprehensive investigation and report. They can explain again how time constraints led to a mistake on the air twice and in print three times.

WHICH CAME FIRST, THE VIDEO OR THE TEXT? One theory is that NBC 6 Miami posted this truncated Zimmerman quote on their website as text. A few days later, a harried Today Show team grabbed the text story and cut the 911 audio to match it for the Mar 22 broadcast; a few days later, thyey re-ran the tape for the Mar 27 broadcast.

Bug why match a text report that way? Surely Today is big enough to do their own editing their way. So, my guess is this - the Mar 19 text matches a Mar 19 (or earlier) broadcast by NBC 6 Miami, which originated the fateful edit. A few days later a harried NBC Today producer grabbed the NBC 6 tape and clippled what he/she needed, including the bum edit.

This kinda/sort exonerates the "Today" team, which is guilty of brain lock and failure to listen critically becasue they recycled a bad decision by NBC 6 Miami.

It also suggests that the extensive, intensive NBC investigation ought to have turned up the original offense in a NBC 6 Miami broadcast. Did they? Can anyone find such a broadcast? Does Lexis immortalize every word uttered at every local news outlet?

My *GUESS* as to the chain of events: A March 19 (or earlier) broadcast by NBC 6 Miami creates the bad edit. The script is matched at the Mar 19 website story. The NBC 6 website recycles the edit in thie follow-up story, which is mirrored at MSNBC. Finally, the Today Show picks up the bad tape from NBC 6 and airs it on Mar 22 and again on Mar 27.

That results in the five uses we have seen and suggests there is a broadcast usage yet to surface.

SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND... CONFUSION: Why did NBC 6 Miami update these stories from March 17 and March 19 on April 9, after editing the two we have already flagged? If someone could work some GoogleCache magic that would be lovely. Meanwhile, a fairly convincing clue is in the comments to the Mar 19 story, from 18 hours ago:

This article contains an extremely misleading "quote" of the 911 call and needs to be corrected! What he said was, "Hey we've had some break-ins in my neighborhood, and there's a real suspicious guy...This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about." The "he looks black" the response to a direct question asked by the dispatcher about whether Martin was "white, black, or Hispanic."

Oh, and my Kung Fu is unexpectedly adequate - here is a screen shot of the Google Cache as of April 6, complete with the phrase NBC 6 is trying to bury:

You won't see that now! And do note, the edit is different (my emphasis): There's a real suspicious guy. This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something. He look's black".

The March 17 story has a byline for Mike Schneider, an AP reporter, and a version of his story is widespread. However, I find this in the national version but *not* in the current version shown by NBC 6 Miami:

The teen had gone to a convenience store to buy candy and was walking back to his family’s home in the neighborhood.

“This guy looks like he is up to no good. He is on drugs or something,” Zimmerman told the dispatcher from his SUV. He added that the black teen had his hand in his waistband and was walking around looking at homes.

He has said he acted in self-defense, but Martin’s family said they are now more convinced than ever that Zimmerman should be charged in the shooting.

The NBC 6 version now omits the italicized paragraph. Do note that what the AP used is fair, but on March 19 NBC 6 extends it to "“This guy looks like he is up to no good. He is on drugs or something. He looks black".

Is it possible they re-wrote the AP story and have now buried it? The Google Cache version I find at the NBC 6 website was saved on Apr 10, 2012 08:02:20 GMT, so it succeeds their April 9 re-edit. Irk me. However, this suggestive but hardly conclusive comment from March 17 provokes suspicions:

I find it odd that in his 911 call he keeps pointing out the boy is black and makes speculations: "He looks like he was on drugs", "His hand is in his waistband". He's the captain of a neighborhood WATCH not a neighborhood ACT.

The current version makes no mention of Zimmerman saying the boy was black; the AP version distributed elsewhere does not quote Zimmerman saying that, although it includes "He added that the black teen had his hand in his waistband", so maybe that is what this reader had in mind. Well, the NBC cover-up is holding on this one.

TO BE FAIR: NBC might want to segue to the old "Cut and Paste ate my brain" defense. A mistake made once just rumbled through their echo chamber, with multiple editors at multiple sites noticing nothing. Rodeo clowns without malice. Might work. But did they ever give Bush a break when he rolled with the "I'm too stupid to be evil" defense? They did not.

AND ON THE BRIGHT SIDE: We can't get Howard Kurtz and the Bigfoot media watchers to take on NBC, but at least NBC is reading their critics. Let me check to see if they hit the tipjar. (There is no tipjar.)

Washington Post: We Tried To Bury That Story About ObamaCare Blowing Up The Deficit

By Sean Higgins

Mon., April 16, 2012 6:31 PM ET

Tags: Media - ObamaCare - Deficit - Economy

Washington Post columnist Patrick Pexton made a rather startling admission in the paper’s Sunday edition: The Post never meant for their recent story about how President Obama’s health care law expands the budget deficit to become a viral Internet sensation. In fact, they deliberately tried to bury the story.

Putting the story (inside the paper) on A3 was the right judgment for a print publication. (Story author Lori) Montgomery urged her editors, correctly, not to put it on the front page: it wasn’t worth that.

The story in question was titled “Health care law will add $340 billion to deficit, new study finds.” It pointed out that the administration had double-counted Medicare savings in the law and once you adjusted for that it added to the deficit rather than reducing it, as the White House has claimed. This is pretty significant news and was soon repeated and reposted throughout the web.

Pexton, the Post’s resident ombudsman (an in-house critic-scold for those not familiar with journo-speak), admits that they are ambivalent about this success, calling story’s popularity a reflection of our “our reactive, partisan, hyperventilating media culture.”

You see the research was done by Charles Blahous, a Republican appointee to Medicare and Social Security’s board of trustees. Several readers responded by telling Pexton that this GOP association (somehow) tainted the data and should be ignored, despite the fact that Blahous was approved by Obama in 2010.

“Republicans say yes, it’s an accounting trick, Democrats and the CBO say no, it’s the only realistic way to do it,” wrote Pexton. So, who is right in this dispute? Don’t ask Pexton, who offered no opinion and instead seemed to want to wash his hands of the whole matter:

We in the media like the Web traffic that a story like this attracts. It quickens the media pulse; we all get a frisson of pleasure from being viral on the Internet for a day.

But I’m not sure the truth wins. The truth is that every complex law change, every annual federal budget, is a risk. They’re all based on assumptions and forecasts that may or may not come true. And when they don’t, Congress and the president have to adjust.

Well, one way to ensure that the truth wins out is is to report all the facts to your readers. And putting it on the front page is one way to get it to them. Just sayin’.

"To the haranguers of the populace among the ancients, succeed among the modernsyour writers of political pamphlets and news-papers, and your coffee-house talkers."--Benjamin Franklin, Reply to Coffee House Orators, 1767

If there’s one thing that’s utterly predictable during the course of our war, it’s that major journalistic outlets will publish stories that shame our troops or place them at greater risk — but only after very public (and comically insincere) hand-wringing. I wonder . . . if any Afghan soldiers turn their weapons on their American allies as a reprisal, will the Times editors at least send flowers to the families of the fallen? Perhaps a card? “We’re sincerely sorry that our journalistic ‘ethics’ led to the death of your husband/wife/son/daughter, but there was a vital need to cast our war effort in a negative light. After all, the New York Times leads us in Pulitzers at the moment, and nothing says ‘Pulitzer’ like exposing two-years-old wrongdoing by privates.”

But if you’re one of those courageous and fearless “let’s tell the raw truth, and let the chips fall where they may” types, and you’re tempted to respect the L.A. Times for its journalistic integrity, let me remind you of a time when the newspaper showed restraint: When it decided — in the midst of a hotly contested presidential campaign — not to publish a videotape of Barack Obama praising former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi at a 2003 dinner. After all, that’s just a future president discussing one of the world’s most hot-button geopolitical issues (with a bonus appearance by applauding domestic terrorists). Move along. Nothing to see there.

Photographs help Americans see the wars, to remember something wise that Robert E. Lee said during the Civil War and that still holds true: “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of it.”

But of course, JDN seeks to distract from the corruption of the LA Slimes.

If the left didn't have double standards, they'd have no standards at all.

LA Times made a promise. What is a "confidential source" unless it's "confidential"?

The Times on Tuesday issued a statement about its decision not to post the tape.

"The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it," said the newspaper's editor, Russ Stanton. "The Times keeps its promises to sources."

Jamie Gold, the newspaper's readers' representative, said in a statement: "More than six months ago the Los Angeles Times published a detailed account of the events shown on the videotape. The Times is not suppressing anything. Just the opposite -- the L.A. Times brought the matter to light."

"Those aren't my socks". They found that substance in Randy Moss' car when he couldn't break free from single coverage, a cop on the hood, and he said, I can't think of who's been driving this lately.-----------"Photographs help Americans see the wars"

GM is right about lack of restraint but that is a given.

Making the adjustment to waging war in an age of instant cameras and photo transmission everywhere was a failure of a few troops in a couple crucial situations with tremendous cost. The giddiness you may feel after a necessary kill needs to be internal - even thousands miles away from the LA Times or al Jazeera headquarters.

There once was an NFL coach (Bud Grant) who told his players that when you get to the end zone, act like that is where the play was designed to go. Eleven years into the war, how are we not training soldiers what to do in the event of a kill - and enforcing the policy.

We also failed to make the adjustment in Washington to waging war in the age of daily tracking polls. Always hard to sell the public on the necessary war you command when you personally oppose it.

Cutting off ears, instantly transmitted photos and daily tracking polls do not mix or add up to a successfully sustained war effort against a fully committed enemy - who has our own media on their side.

Reading it I learned all about clueless liberal columnists and the papers will to publish them and nothing about Romney.

"Mitt Romney has made clear during this primary season that he was willing to be neither moderate nor independent — but rather “severely conservative” — in seeking the Republican nomination."

Mr. Blow, you are writing about a GENERAL ELECTION speech you moron. With no opponents left he is no longer seeking the endorsement. And the issue of the election isn't "regressivity" and "social direction" unless you are shamelessly in the ideological tank, it is about jobs, recovery, growth and American strength.

You guys have called Hannity a blowhard too, maybe repetitive and not enjoyable to listen to, but in his diatribe I hear him use valid examples to back up the larger points that he makes. Rush L is as partisan-right as they come; when he pens an op/ed in the WSJ** he includes arguably valid points to support his assertions. This piece did not contain one that I could find.

Is it really a coherent point that this election is a referendum on Mitt Romney? Romney spelled out with the greatest clarity yet the difference in the visions between the parties and the campaigns and Blow says it is about tactics? Okay, if so, how so? He doesn't say.

Yes a liberal columnist is legit to print - the search is still on for a good one. This column to me is just sloppy journalism. He was ostensibly covering and opining on the Romney speech and there is no indication that he even saw it or heard it, not a single quote though he did say it contained 'some punchy lines'. It reflects on the publication 2 days after they admitted to being a partisan shill for the President - the link is in my post. This could havegone on cognitive dissonance of the left (or better yet ignore it for having adding nothing of value to the discussion), but Blow is media unless one admits the left and the mainstream media are one and the same.

The sharpest remark of the evening came from Kimmel at the conclusion of his monologue.

"Some people say journalism is in decline, they say you've become too politicized, too focused on sensationalism, they say you no longer honor your duty to inform America but instead actively divide us so that your corporate overlord can rake in the profits," Kimmel said. "I don't have a joke for this, it's just what some people say."

"What do you think of the Republican criticism that we are politicizing it -- that the White House, I should say, is politicizing it?"---------Worried about my previous commingling, is she news or opinion?